#356 from Innovative Leader Volume 7, Number 8          August 1998

Allocating Responsibility and Taking Appropriate Action
by Heero Hacquebord

Mr. Hacquebord (Waunakee, WI; phone 608-849-3100; heeroh@mailbag.com; www.heero.com/) consults and speaks on methods to help organizations break through to new levels of performance. He’s worked directly with Dr. W. Edwards Deming and is completing a book on creating improved performance.

We’re responsible for our actions and decisions. However, in any organization, who specifically is responsible for occurrences and for taking appropriate actions? Let’s, for example, take a school. We may say that teachers are responsible to teach, students are responsible to study, and the principal is responsible to lead and manage the school.

On the surface, this seems clear and unambiguous. We’ve allocated responsibilities for executing tasks. But who’s responsible when something happens? For instance, if a student gets a poor score for a test, is the student responsible for not studying, or the teacher for not teaching appropriately? We can ask whether all the students did poorly. In which case we put responsibility on the teacher.  Can we assume, however, that if only one or two students did poorly, that it’s not the teacher’s responsibility. This is an over-simplification of the “real world.” The students who did poorly could have difficulty with that specific teacher. Maybe they cannot get along with her, or she cannot get along with them. In other words, the interaction between the teacher and a specific student can have an effect on the student’s test scores.

Can the board of directors in a business organization always hold the CEO responsible if the organization’s performance is poor? Is it possible that factors beyond the control of the CEO caused the poor performance? If so, how would one know?  The causes of performance and occurrences aren’t always obvious, and the allocation of responsibility and action isn’t easy. 

After observing unacceptable performance or outcomes, leaders must know when to act on a system, when to change and improve the it, or when to act on an individual person or event. Performance and outcomes will always be affected by the system, and may also be influenced by one or more individual actions. The following actions are therefore possible:

1) Act on the system

2) Act on the individual

1) and 2) are mutually exclusive. Doing them simultaneously assumes that the individual always has an effect. This is wrong, and will often put responsibility and blame inappropriately on the individual. When there’s an individual effect we need to act on it before acting on the system. That’s because we wouldn’t be able to understand and predict the system’s effects when they are “clouded” by individual effects.

Practical Applications

The different actions that one can take are:

•  Do nothing.

•  Act on systemic effects by improving and changing the system.

•  Act on the individual effect to find out what happened and prevent it from happening again.

The strategy that leaders need to allocate responsibility and action is therefore dependent on knowing whether performance and outcomes are caused by the system, known as common causes; or caused by the individual effects, known as special causes. When we have numerical data on performance and outcomes, statistical analyses enable us to determine whether we have special causes, or whether there are only common causes. With data, we can use a scientific approach to solving the allocation problem (see Understanding Variation:  The Key to Managing Chaos by Donald J. Wheeler, SPC Press, 1993).  But even when we don’t have numerical data, it’s important to understand the nature of these different causes.  Then a leader can make a rational differentiation between common and special causes and, therefore, allocate responsibility and action more effectively.

To distinguish between common and special causes the following questions are useful:

1)  Could this event or outcome have occurred to someone else under these conditions?  If “yes,” then we’re dealing with common causes. If “no,” because this event under these conditions is specific to a person or reason, then we have a special cause.

2)  Was this event or outcome caused by this person or reason? Or did this person happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? If “yes” to the first question, then we have a special cause. If “yes” to the second, it’s a common cause.

3)  Are there many causes to this event? Or only one or a couple? “Yes” to the first question implies common causes. “Yes” to the second implies special cause.

Once we’ve determined whether the performance or the outcome is due to common cause or due to one or more special causes, we will then apply the appropriate strategy. Figure 1 shows how this is done.

JANE:  ADD FIGURE ANYWHERE AFTER THIS

A one time special cause is one in which we’re confident won’t occur again. Acting on a special cause implies that we’ll eliminate it if it produces undesirable outcomes, and repeat it if outcomes are desirable. The following example illustrates how this theory is applied.

A Hole in the Wall

One afternoon, while working in my office, the telephone rang. My 13-year old’s principal was on the line. “Your son kicked a hole in the classroom wall,” he said. I wondered if this was a special cause.  So I asked the principal: “How did this happen? Did my son go up to the wall in the classroom and kick a hole in it?” “Well no,” he said. “They were playing in the classroom, and he kicked a hole in the wall.”  I asked him, “Were there other kids in the room. Do you know why they were playing in the classroom? Was a teacher present?”  The principal responded, “Why don’t you ask him for the details.  He’s standing right here.”

Then I realized this was serious.  My son explained that it was recess and it was raining outside. The teacher gave them a basketball to pass around in the classroom. He then walked out of the room and left 35 kids to themselves.  My son was standing against the wall when someone passed the ball to him. He jumped to catch it and accidentally kicked the gypsum-board wall.

I then asked the principal, “With 35 teenagers passing a ball back and forth in the classroom, and no teacher to supervise, do you think that this incident could have happened to any of the other students?” “Well, yes, but you know that the kids are much too rough, and this sort of thing has escalated recently in the school.”  I asked, “Since this could have happened to any of the others, don’t you think that the incident was caused by the prevailing circumstances, which only the teacher could have prevented, and that my son was unlucky and got caught against the wall?” “In fact,” I said, “don't you think this was caused by the system in place, and that the teacher was asking for trouble by putting 35 unsupervised teenagers in a classroom and giving them a ball to play with?” “Yes, but they are much too rough and careless” he repeated. I thought to myself that this principal should institute a requirement that only passive kids, who are never rough, and have no energy, should be allowed in his school. The principal became agitated from my questions and I realized that he and I were in two different worlds. I told him that I would be willing to pay for repairing the wall and I’ll talk to my son.

Later that day I told my son that the problem seemed to be a common cause, and I wouldn’t hold him responsible for the damaged wall. He agreed and was relieved to see his father using more sound judgment than the school principal. This incident, and my approach to it, helped bind our solid relationship.

What would have happened if I had punished him? That would have implied that he would be responsible for something that he didn’t specifically cause. It would have hurt him emotionally, and distanced him from me. My analysis and actions of that situation were based on the theory explained in this paper. The theory isn’t only useful, but necessary, if we desire improvements in performance, relations and human behavior.

Summary

Leaders have an obligation to act in a knowledgeable and responsible manner.  Common causes are therefore the responsibility of the leaders who have the authority to change and improve systems. When leaders confuse common and special causes with one another we see the following consequences:

•  People are rewarded for things they didn’t cause.

•  People are blamed for things they aren’t responsible for. (Note how the principal wanted me to punish my son for something he didn’t cause.)

•  Trends are seen that don’t exist.

•  Action is often taken that’s incorrect, or shouldn’t have been taken at all.

•  We neglect to take action when action is needed.

•  We don’t know when to seek correction by focusing on an individual, versus improving or changing the system within which the individual operates.

•  Incorrect allocation of responsibility and inappropriate action raises costs and demoralizes people.

By applying the decision chart, below, leaders will be able to allocate responsibility correctly and assure that action taken will be effective in terms of improvement.